


Hang Dog

by bonehandledknife (ladywinter), Primarybufferpanel (ArwenLune)



Series: The Mountains Are The Same [25]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Fanart, Gen, PTSD, We love the Ace I swear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-21
Updated: 2015-10-21
Packaged: 2018-04-27 10:16:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5044492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladywinter/pseuds/bonehandledknife, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArwenLune/pseuds/Primarybufferpanel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Hang dog—To rest on the rope as you lead climb, putting weight on the protection rather than the rock.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>He stepped into the space that the Organic Mechanic had been floating to shove him away and asked of her, “Everything all right?”</p><p>Dag looked around them and then at him, uneasy, and told him, “You bring evil.”</p><p>Max could only stare at her silently.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hang Dog

_Ahh home sweet home,_ Organic cackled as the lift settled into its garage-level cradle. He lept off the platform, making a bee-line towards that tall, straw-haired girl, Dag, who was standing by the lift landing.

Max followed hastily after, watched as Organic raised a hand to lay it, bloody, on her waist and she flinched bodily away, looking around her.

He stepped into the space that the Organic Mechanic had been floating to shove him away and asked of her, “Everything all right?”

Dag looked around them and then at him, uneasy, and told him, “You bring evil.”

Max could only stare at her silently.

“Not that again,” Toast said, and walked to stand next to them, “Welcome back, Fool. How sure are you of these people?"

"They, mm, seem willing to…" he gestured vaguely. "Go with the new wind direction. Bury old things."

"Hmm. Guess we'll have to catch them up on what that new direction is."

"Furiosa’s been doing a bit better. Today at council we’d found out…” she trailed off.

Max had begun surveying the tower above them, looking for the where he thought Furiosa's quarters were, and when he glanced down, Toast was looking at him thoughtfully.

“I think we can catch you up later.” Toast said finally, exchanging a glance with Dag.

The entire garage was buzzing as people swarmed up to the new cars and their riders. Max watched with a jaundiced eye as the newly arrived war boys were quickly split up from each other by a mixture of unpainted war boys and what looked like the men that walked the mills. Austeyr was leading the greetings, grin wide, with handshakes and shoulderpats and with one hand on something sharp. There was some shouting from one corner and Max glanced over to see some sort of huddle with the Vuvalini and lot of hugging going on.

 

There was a commotion on the other side of that car as two figures fluttered down from above and landed on the lift platform. One walked swiftly to where the buggy with the Vuvalini and the history woman still stood, and some words were exchanged as the old woman gingerly got off.

“Friends?” Max asked, nodding towards the black-robed figures.

“In some senses of the word,” Toast said dryly. She was fingering a sidearm and her weight was forward and Max thought _, ah, those kinds of friends_.

The Mechanic was looking at them with his head tilted.

“What about the ones you bring,” Toast asked, “ ‘Friends’ too?”

“Could be,” Max hummed, pointedly ignoring the Mechanic’s chuckle, “Lost some on the way over.”

Razor popped his head over the edge of the truck, “Deserved to get ‘lost’, if you ask me.”  

 _I'll go ahead and see Furiosa if you want to wait_ , said the Organic Mechanic, and Max flinched, only half listening to Toast talk to Razor. _I'm sure she could do with a checkup._

Max aimed himself in the direction of where he knew the stairs to be, and barrelled toward her quarters, only vaguely aware that one of Furiosa's crew was pacing him. It was strange to see him without paint, but his scarring was familiar - it was the brawny one that had headbutted him before he left. He was saying something, but the OM was loudly fantasising about Furiosa and it was taking all of Max's concentration to remind himself that there was no point in strangling him.

Her quarters were empty, and Max looked around frantically at the bare mattress, the few empty bottles standing around.

"Been trying to tell ya," the warboy said, giving him a cautious look. "She went to council this mornin'. Probably still there."

Max whipped back out the door, striding down the hallways and ignoring the way the intermittent light made the skull beneath the Organic’s face flicker into sight. The man was laughing at him.

 _Lead on,_ he said wetly, _Never been up there meself._

Footsteps paced him and he reminded himself that it was probably— Kompass, that was his name. Furiosa’s crewmember. Someone friendly and not someone to shoot.

The Organic Mechanic was walking next to Kompass, singsonging, “ _bloodbag_ , _hey_ _bloodbag_ , _blooooodbag_ ,” trying to make him look. Trying to make him turn and punch someone, anyone, the warboy who was the only one there. Footsteps echoed in the small space, the skitter of rock as boots scattered gravel, his steps felt unsteady as it slid sometimes due to the small stones. A cracking sound as something crunched and broke in two beneath his weight. Just some limestone maybe, or old pottery, not a skull. Not bones.

_Are you sure?_

Max clapped a hand to his own neck, trying to reassure himself there wasn't a hooked needle in his artery.

_Bloodbag, hey hey bloooodbag, gonna hook you up, drain you dry, wanna watch when I examine Furiosa, bloodbag?_

_Look at me or I'll taze you in the balls, bloodbag! Bzzzt!_

_BLOODBAG!_

When he finally spilled into the room, as the space opened out around him and the window opened huge on the far end and Furiosa looked up, slumped in her chair, eyes tired but still green, their gazes met like a shock to the system. He felt like there was suddenly room in his lungs. Her breathing was quiet and slow; everything, actually, was suddenly quiet.

And Max found his breathing quieting too.

He moved forward.

 

* * *

 

The council had broken up at the arrival of the patrol and the Wastelander they had gone to assist, the Tribunes - at their request earlier today no longer referred to as the Widows - and some of the other council members heading over to the lift arrival platform.

Furiosa had stayed behind in the council room, and Ace knew it was in no way by choice, but because she hadn't been able to get up from the low, cushioned chair she'd been given. She'd looked like she'd wanted to curse him when he hadn't offered to help her up, but had decided to save her breath.  

"Ah Boss, y'just be overtaxin' yourself. They'll come up here anyway."

In fact, the first one to do so was the Wastelander himself, striding in with long paces and a tension to his face that made Ace straighten up. The man halted abruptly a pace in front of Furiosa, as if he'd reached the end of an invisible rope, and made a questioning soft of hum. His eyes darted all around the room, as if not able to look at her, or seeking something, or both. Ace took a quick glance around, but there there was nothing, the room emptied of danger, Furiosa sitting in her chair, weary and maybe a bit breathless but otherwise mending.

The feral’s hands twitched as if wanting something to _do,_ to attack, and Ace prepared to step forward—

The Boss tilted her head slightly, and something seemed to pass between them. A pained sound rumbled through the room.

And then the man went to his knees as if the rope holding him back had been cut, more collapse than kneeling, more collision than embrace. Both his hands reached out to cradle her head and bring it against his. In moving he'd ended up between her splayed knees, and it was the kind of sudden, confining closeness she'd never accepted from new crew, that always had her go still and tense, meeting Ace's eyes and waiting for him to drag the new guy away and teach him better.

Ace felt himself rock forward to intervene. It was his job to make sure new crew - and was that was this man was? - didn't make her uncomfortable.

Austeyr had trailed into the council room after the Wastelander, and Ace saw the same look of alarmed surprise on his face that Ace imagined was on his own.

Furiosa didn't quite have the reaction he'd expected, though she did seem startled. Her hand came up to rest in the man's neck, and one of his hands unclenched from around her head and wrapped tightly around her shoulders, and he buried his face against her neck, breathing harshly.

Ace met her eyes over the Wastelander's shoulder, made a gesture to offer to get him away from her. She flicked a 'no' with her eyes.

"Max," she breathed, and stroked her hand lightly over the back of the man's head. "Hey…" He made a sound of pure relief.

After a while the man abruptly seemed to realise what he was doing, that he was being observed by Ace, Austeyr and now also Kompass. He shuddered and withdrew, putting both hands around her head for another moment of intense eye contact. Furiosa blinked at him slowly, clearly exhausted, and then he let go of her and rocked back onto his heels.

The click of his braced knee joint rang around the room, and Max winced.

Ace met Kompass' eyes.

"Let's…” Kompass said, “Let's get you to your quarters, Boss," moving in as soon as Max made space. Austeyr did too, and between the two of them they got her upright, arms draped over their shoulders, and moving out of the council room.

 

"Need ta talk to ya," Ace said to Max when the man made to follow Furiosa out of the room.

The man looked a little feral around the eyes, the way he'd been the first time Ace had seen him, twitchy and tense. His eyes stayed on Furiosa, and when she was no longer in sight, they kept flicking back to the doorway where she'd left.

"The Boss is—" Ace suddenly didn't know how to have this talk. He'd had it with new crew before, but he'd had a better idea of where they came from, what they'd understand. And he knew very different things about the Boss now.

But he had to try.  There was no precedent for this kind of demotion, he'd been her Ace since she made Imperator, but in other crews a new Ace was only appointed if the previous one made it to Valhalla or got too sick to do war.

That he had been demoted was clear; being kept in the dark and discarded in favour of a new crew could mean nothing else, and he'd just done her the inconvenience of not dyin'. How she expected this Wasteland man to fulfil his duties Ace didn't know, but he had to train her new Ace the best he could. If not for her sake, then for the sake of his own pride.  

"Ya can't just touch her like that."

Max hummed, something like a question.

"She's... There've been—" He forced himself to stop. "You was a bloodbag," he said then. "Must've known t' Organic Mechanic."

There was a flash of something, something a lot like disgust, in Max's eyes.

"He'd—The Boss would be, ah," Ace dropped his voice, "scared, of him. Once we knew, we never left her alone with—."

Max's face did something cold and hard, a kind of feral danger to him that reminded Ace just how much this man wasn't a War Boy, wasn't constrained by Citadel rules.

" _When_."

"She never said. Before she made Imperator, maybe when she lost her arm." And— and maybe also when she was in the Vault. He had thought Joe would have made sure of the best care, never let Organic touch his treasures wrong, but… Ace'd thought a lot of wrong things.

"He won't again," Max ground out.

"What, leave her alo—"

"Touch. anyone." he grunted. "War boys. _Furiosa_."

The man's hands were clenched in a way that suggested he'd personally made sure of it, and Ace felt an odd swell of relief, that something he hadn't been able to change had been taken out of his hands. Maybe this man wouldn't make such a bad Ace after all.

"Good," he said, and then with feeling, " _Good._ "

They were both silent for the space of a long moment, and then Ace realised he hadn't gotten to the end of what he'd meant to say.

"She used ta be a wife," he finally threw out, the words feeling wrong sour on his tongue with all the times he'd said those words with a sense of pride. That their Imperator had been considered worthy by the Immortan, even if she hadn't turned out to be fit for purpose.   

Max grunted like _yeah_ , like that wasn't news, and Ace wondered when she'd told him, this Wasteland stranger. Gave him such a vulnerable piece of herself.  

"Said Joe was just like Organic. Mean. Touched them like— that."

Max turned to him with raised eyebrows, as if baffled by what Ace had just said, and then grunted like it was the most obvious thing he'd ever heard.

"You.. you knew that?" Ace said.

"Hm, you _didn't?_ " Max dashed his eyes away from him as if he wasn’t worth seeing, already moving after where Furiosa had left, with crew.

Ace stared after him, felt like something in him stretched and then _snapped_ , and then he turned away to the balcony, climbed out and up until he found a secure little ledge where he could stew in his own confusion and anger.

**Author's Note:**

> With many thanks to [Yume](http://youkaiyume.tumblr.com/) for her amazing artwork!
> 
> PS: I promise we're going to start being nice to Ace soon.


End file.
